Our first house

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Initially we're getting a trailer to take a whole lot of stuff from our flat in Curitiba to the land such as desks, oven, bikes etc. We've bought some marquees and we have two tents so that we can keep all the things dry until we've made a simple shed to store them in. We're getting a petrol or diesel generator so that we'll have power for tools and lights until we've got the solar system ready.

The tower

We need to have a water tank that can store a few days water in it (we don't need a huge reserve because our water's coming from the stream, not from rainfall). The tank needs to be at least five meters high so that there's some reasonable pressure for the taps and shower. To get the water from the stream up to the tank, we'll be making a spiral water-wheel.

Also since the tower will make a good location for the solar panels (not shown in the picture) and their accompanying components and batteries (in the large weather-proof box next to the tank). This large box contains the charge-controller, batteries and power inverter. It has two cables coming out of it, one 5VDC supply for the internet router, and the main 220VAC supply for the house.

A pole can be put onto the top of the tower so that the 3G yagi antenna can be raised by the extra five meters. There is a small box at the top of the pole to house the 3G router which has two cables going all the way down the pole, the first is a USB cable which carries the 5VDC power from the inverter (which has a USB power output), and the second is the LAN cable into the central network hub for the house.

A variation of the tower we may decide on is to make the top floor into a room that the battery bank, charge controller and inverter on it along with a shelf and tools for working on the equipment and solar panel construction so it's all in one place. All these items should be on shelves just in case of the unlikely even that the water tank gets a leak. The bottom and middle level could also be walled off with cheap ply to form additional storage rooms, but only for things that can handle temporary moisture since the top level could occasionally have tank leakage or spillage problems, especially when doing work on them or changing/cleaning them.